


Rattlesnake

by SnowMercury



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Season 4 Spoilers, Self-harm stimming, Slaughter-Typical Violence, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:00:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24194737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnowMercury/pseuds/SnowMercury
Summary: A short introspective of how Melanie feels about the Slaughter, and what it feels like.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	Rattlesnake

**Author's Note:**

> (Internalized ableism refers to a moment where a youtube watcher refers to experiencing delusions as a negative character trait. I’m not sure if internalized is the best way to describe that, but it only happens in one paragraph and i did not have it show up elsewhere. to skip it, skip the paragraph that starts with “The watchers. It is always the watchers.” )

There is something nestled in her chest. She’s felt it there ever since her trip, something circling her heart and tugging, rough scales and a rattle that shows itself when anybody else comes close.

She has no room to care about it, not when this thing that has slithered under her skin squeezes so tight, wringing out her soul and leaving it tired. Tired not in a cold way, mind you, but tired in the warm, rugged,  _ sharp _ way. It is not blisterburn hot, nor is it for any special cause.

No, Melanie King is simply tired. Tired and worn down, to the point where even her nails itch to be used, tired from days of gritting her teeth in this environment and oh, how she wants to just scratch and claw and tear not at something but at  _ someone _ , not necessarily just those who deserve it but oh how they make justifying scratching that itch so much easier. She can feel her care about justifications slipping away even now.

All that is left is that sandpaper tired. 

There is a certain kind of heat that comes not from flames, not from a devoted anger, but from a broad, fed-up sort of livid. It is the kind colored maroon, boiling and poisoned, not meant to dip someone’s food in but for toxifying an entire open buffet. 

Her anger has no focus because she is angry at so many people, all of the time. 

Scritch scratch, goes the itch. Rough scales caress it.

The watchers. It is always the watchers. Always the people who watch and watch and watch and  _ judge _ , always judging. She is too short. She is too small. She is delusional. She is lying. She did not see or experience what she thought she did, and her insistence that she did is not proof but rather damnation. She Knows what she saw, what she has experienced, much as she wishes she didn’t. Even if she didn’t, would it be too much to ask for an  _ ounce _ of compassion?

Still they watched. Still she felt those eyes. The eyes of other people, meeting hers, always,  _ always _ watching. When was the last time she looked at a camera and did not see a pupil? 

That inky blackness, round and present and watching. She feels more than remembers one scripted piece of recording, where she had just completed a speech and was stuck smiling, breathing through her teeth in ragged breaths, corralled into a ninth retake that had worn away at her solid cliff face of reserves with each redo. It was barely a smile at that point, her eyes almost too wide and mouth too strained, hands almost shaking with effort. Her calm was a beach, but it wasn’t the steady waves or the smooth part of the shells, no. It was the rage at a seagull that had stolen half your food and shit on the rest, the grittiness of sand beneath your toes between your fingers under your nails in your hair in your ears in your eyes- it was the pointed pebble and the clasping crab, the bite of summer flies and the shattered sharp edges of a shell. It was the raucous rabble of a crowd, shouting around you while you try to read your book in peace and you watch as your hand shudders with rage on the page turn, as you think to yourself how lucky you are that you own this book so you don’t have to pay for repairs on the many small tears now found on the edges of it’s pages from force and nails alike. 

Her calm is the calm of a rattlesnake, shaking and watching and baring its fangs from its position snug and smothering around her heart. This anger is not young, is not new. It has been here longer than she can remember, the phantom bullet in her leg is just what cracked the eggshell. The egg tooth on something she isn’t sure she can ever put back again, but maybe, maybe. But not now. 

She can still feel it down to her bones. An itch that drives her to bend her joints just a bit too far to feel that familiar stretching pain, drives her to claw at her own skin not because she feels like something is there, but because  _ nothing _ is and that absence is leaving a restless empty space, devoid of experiencing. It is an itch that comes from biting her tongue and meaning it, from pulling on her hair and banging her head and it is so, so close to the ache of the cold that shivers her heart sometimes, but not always. 

She is tired. And she is trapped. And she is angry about that. And there is not much she can do about any of those things, so she does what she can. 

She rattles. Even when they hold her down, cutting out her fangs, hands not around her neck but she can feel them there, choking her all the same- she rattles, and snaps, and writhes, and she fights. If there is nothing else to be said about her, she is a fighter. She fights. 

Melanie King eventually leaves the institute. Sometimes she can still feel something writhing there, in her chest. But she will make it. That snake is venomoid now, glands gone and rough scales missing. With time, its muscles will atrophy. It can do no harm now, nothing beyond the regular bite. 

And for once, she is fine.


End file.
